Europe trip

Day 0 – Wednesday

We had a 1 hour delay, it turned out to be 45 minutes. We enjoyed the AA lounge, thanks to Rosalin’s dad’s Platinum status. On the airplane. We have nice seats, 2 across, three rows one after each other. I was trying to figure out what the delay was going to do to our connecting flight from Boston to Paris. But it worked out fine, we hardly had to wait and we were in the air again.

After taking off from Los Angeles, and reaching a comforrtable altitude, the captain said it’s ok to turn on electronic devices, so I started taking them out one by one. The most interesting was the GPS. I measured our speed and kept track of the course we were taking. Speed 599 Mph, heading East (a bit NortEast), anyway, the GPS was working great, loved it.

We had a nice ride all the way. 5 hours 25 minutes from Los Angeles to Boston, and about 6 hours and a half to Paris from there. You have to buy food on the LA to Boston flight, (Did I say food? Sorry, snack! it’s a croissant with a couple of slices of turkey). But the flight from Boston to Paris had food, (Did I say food? Sorry, I don’t know what it was, I think it was acvtually a Lean Cuisine mascarading as food. Anyway.

Why don’t you make waves with the new Google “Simple Communication Object” The wave has conversations, collaboration, media, tweets etc. It is a tool that can function as (Notice I didn’t say replace) many applications that you already use to communicate these days. Here are some of the uses:

• A simple email conversation can be done between 2 or more people, absentee or real time, so you can say, email/chat/IM/SMS rolled into one.
• Instant Mesaging conv will be done, when 2 or more people are on the same wave at the same time (Updates are instantaneous like IM)
• Easy to share photos or other media, Wiki like sites, Click and drag (See below details)
• Collaboratively edit waves/documents. Very impressive, multiple people can update at the same time.
• OS Platform that can let competing companies create Blogging sites, discussion groups, or even a clone of the Wave program so everyone can communicate together within an Intranet or a compbination intra/internet.
• APIs that will let developers build games, let you integrate with other communications systems, like Twitter, and maybe later to Facebook etc.
  Open Source allows the Integration of waves into workflows.

Here is a video showing the launch of the Wave

The video

Ain’t this the truth?

hehehehe!

If you were to guess how many times your heart beats over your life, what would you guess (without looking below)?

A= 1-2 Million
B= 1-2 Billion
C= 2-3 Billion
D= 10 + Billion
E= None of the above

What do you think?

Well an everage heart beats about 70 beats per minute. The average person lives about 75 years. Based on those assumptions, here are some interesting facts:

Facts your heart beats

Avg beat/min 70 Avg life 75

Total Beats per minute = 70
Total Beats per hour = 4,200
Total Beats per day = 100,800
Total Beats per week = 705,600
Total Beats per month = 3,074,400
Total Beats per year = 36,892,800
Total Beats per 10 years = 368,928,000
Total Beats per avg. life = 2,766,960,000

So the answer is of course ‘C’ between 2-3 Billion beats. Just thought you would like to know.

-Diran

My blog is run by http://www.BuildWebsite.com, get your own site and blog. See details about webhosting at http://www.buildwebsite.com/webhosting.html

If you disagree, no problem, this is America and you have a right to your opinion. If you think Democrat and Republican will never work, then look at the world’s 8th largest economy run by a Republican married to a Democrat, Arnold Schwartzenneger and Maria Schriver. Heck they don’t even have the same last name, but it’s successful isn’t it?

If you want to comment, go ahead. As long as there is no profannity, I will let the comment go through, pro or con.

Diran

My blog is run by http://www.BuildWebsite.com , get your own site and blog. See details about webhosting at http://www.buildwebsite.com/webhosting.html

WordPress already has the RSS feed and the Atom feeds built in. So no need to add anything, here is how you access them:

http://www.afarian.com/blog/?feed=rss2

or
(http://www.afarian.com/blog/?feed=rss)
and

http://www.afarian.com/blog/?feed=atom

The one with the rss at the end is just a truncated description version, and the other 2 are the full message version. pingomatic uses the rss2 version, but it will accept all 3. Use Pingomatic to submit to the blog search engines such as the Technoratis, Weblogs, Newsgators, IceRockets, etc.

Enjoy.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

New York announced that it will impose a tax called the “Amazon Tax”, which urges online and out of state e-tailers to charge New York city sales tax. This even if the out of state online company doesn’t have any locations or outlets within New York, but if there is even a small website or a blog sending them business through an affiliate link, then there you go.

I guess looking at the immensely successful taxing practices of Canada (Nooot!) seemed attractive to the genius that came up with this idea. “Hey the economy is bad, let’s generate some more revenue by taxing out of state online businesses.”

I will say one thing to you New York, “Buckle your seat belts and keep your arms and legs inside the state at all times…” I smell a backlash coming, or is that the smell of carbon from all the icebergs melting in Canada?

Hey, this is just my opinion ok? if you don’t like it, go to New York, order a book from Amazon and pay the taxes.

I had acquired my prior car from Mercedes of Laguna Niguel. Of course it came with the customary full tank of gas. When we bought my wife’s car from Lexus of Glendale, full tank of gas. When we bought my son’s Toyota Camry (only $22,000) Full-tank-of-gas!!! But when I got my new $60,000 car, 5/8 of a tank.

I complained, the salesman was gracious enough to say, “Let’s go to the gas station and fill it up…” He was going to do it using his own money. That was dedication, but I felt the company had to do that, not the poor salesman. This is why we are having problems with companies surviving in this country. This myopic vision that leads to, ”We only care about the bottom line, so we can enhance shareholder profits and show our bosses that we can squeeze another dime out of the product ….” attitude hurts them in the long run.

I have advice for you Rusnak Mercedes of Arcadia–SELL THE CAR TO ME FOR $60,020, and fill up the tank with gas!!! Keep the customer happy. Go to school and take Marketing 101, Organizational Behavior 101, and most importantly Customer relationship 101.

So I figured, the dealership doesn’t care, but the parent company, Daimler-Chrysler, should. Wrong, once I got the survey, you know the one that says:

“Thank you for purchasing a car from us… How was the experience?”
Me! >> TERRIBLE, Couldn’t you fill up my tank with gas?
Mercedes USA >> We’re happy to hear that. Will you recommend us to your friend(s)
Me! >> NOOO!
Mercedes USA >> That’s great thank you. Please use the space below to send us comments.
Me! >> You should be ashamed of yourselves. (I proceed, of course, with a civilized conversational description, give my phone number and email with the hopes of some response).
Mercedes USA >> Thank you for your comments, one of our staff will get back to you soon.

I looked up “Soon” in the dictionary (In case I didn’t know the meaning), it said the definition of soon is:

  – within a short period
  – before long
  – in the near future
  – promptly or quickly

So I wonder how long (in Man Months) that would be? I’ve been waiting 6 months, still no response. Maybe they still think I’m happy. You know Mercedes, It’s not the $20, I can afford that (Hey I’ve been driving the car for 6-months and have not defaulted on any loans yet:-) but it’s like I rent a Tuxedo from you to go to the prom, and you give me one shoe. There are other stores that will give me both shoes. Maybe next time I’ll go there. Oh, yeah I forgot, I will also tell my friend, and they’ll tell their friends and so on, and so on, and so on.

Too bad it’s such a sweet car though!